4 minute readA superpower you come to know and, if you’re like me, tend to get slayed by that’s quite common among homebuilders – large, medium, single-market, single subdivision, etc. – is a pretty-advanced uncanny BS detector.
It’s a point of pride.
And that pride goes with the literal turf. That turf has capability range that spans from the soil subgrade modulus of a property, to a sourcing and supply workflow involving 600 SKUs and 25 separate skilled trades now commonly elongated well beyond 180 days, to investment and operating capital structures of varying type, risk, and terms, to delicate local, county, state, national jurisdictional navigation, applications and debates and demonstrations, to team member focus and performance, to omnichannel customer engagement and conversion modeling, and a million other forces and factors that occur in and among the end-to-end processes that wind up with modern miracle a household can call home.
Added up, there’s a lot of BS to detect within that capability range, a lot of it intended to stall, or stop, or stifle the work at hand, which is to make and sell and service new homes and neighborhoods, from idea to planning to real-life, to viability, and to vibrancy.
Builders, in a hard day’s work, hear it all, practically. That’s largely because of the truth in a truism that all real estate is local. And when they hear it all, their BS detectors sharpen their ability to recognize, work around, neutralize, and ultimately hurdle resistant forces with the single, self-evident proof-case that there are always more people looking for a home, and they’re the one who can solve for that need.
While it’s a superpower, builders’ BS detectors are just one of a raft of epic problem-and-puzzle solving gifts that accompany their shared deep-seated resolve, striving, and noble purpose. Still, it’s that BS detector that may put builders and their businesses at risk.
Which brings us around to now, where five chronic tension points pose consequential challenges to builders’ well time-tested capability range.
Image source: Eye On Housing, NAHB As you see, every one of these issues builders faced in 2021 are expected to grow more problematic this year.
So, where do builders’ BS detectors factor in here?
Affordability, sustainability, entitlement risk, regulatory cost risk, and the current and next generation workforce … these all rank, year-in-and-year-out, in some form or fashion, as the strategic, business, economic, operational, and community landscape moving-target challenges for which most builders believe they’ve put together their toolbox.
What they know is this. Everybody needs shelter.
The rest of the business – they resolve – is about having the tools to deal with whatever challenges arise, and when someone or some entity suggests that those challenges can be dealt with with fewer or different tools the BS detectors start signalling wildly.
For each source of challenge and risk to the business, there are usual suspect root causes thwarting the forward progress. Usually, they’re representatives of some branch of government or one of its agency extensions, local or not.
All of this may be the case.
What’s true, however, if you detect all of what’s BS, and filter that out, and then reckon this:
The enormity of challenge that’s still there – which is that it will take human talent, able to carry on solving the infinite complexities and variabilities that occur one home at a time using new technologies, new access to data, and timeless artisanal received wisdom in how to make a house a home – is one common denominator crisis that’s unanswered but needs to be, soon.
We wrote about one year ago about how the channel and supply chain disruption, while convulsive and now drawn out in impact, will finally run its course. Then, as never before, the real biggest challenge – people and talent – will re-emerge as the No. 1 most pressing issue.
Then, as ever, the throes of new challenges will rise to take the place of this current, pervasive, budget-buster phenomenon. The crisis of the moment will be lot supply; or it will be interest rate increases squeezing out would-be customers by pushing monthly payments out of their reach; or it will be the economy and sentiment showing signs of wear and tear, or the like.
Still, all of these issues nest – in The Builder’s Daily’s humble view – in one granddaddy of all builders’ pain-points: Capability.
Fact is, no single one of this litany of pain-points – lots, lending, materials, stress to operations, consumer care, even financial fitness through thick and thin – is unsolvable, as long as the right people are energized, engaged, and activated to chase down solutions. That calls for a cultural transformation.
What I know for sure is that terms like capability and culture set off the BS detectors of many builders, because they’re abstract, and they tend to be politicized these days.
I use them here as tools that need to go into the toolbox builders draw on to keep solving the countless, ever-intensifying challenge of doing what they do so well. Making homes for more people.
Join the conversation
